


Risen Steeple

by lovi



Series: Sunken Labyrinth/Risen Steeple [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Dreamscapes, First Love, Flying, I'll add more tags as I continue with this, Intimacy, Love, M/M, Mentions of Death, Nightmares, Psychological Trauma, Self-Reflection, commitment issues, falling, intense depictions of dream experiences
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27463996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovi/pseuds/lovi
Summary: Several dreams in which Miya Atsumu flies.
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Miya Atsumu, Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu, Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: Sunken Labyrinth/Risen Steeple [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006608
Kudos: 18





	Risen Steeple

**Author's Note:**

> just a little warning!!!
> 
> this is atsumu’s section!!! in almost every chapter, drowning is hinted at as being the conclusion of the chapter's dream. this story is not about character death but rather the actual content of the dream itself: I just chose the standard dream tropes of drowning/flying & falling as ways to further depict the lens of sakuatsu's world-viewing goggles. each chapter will end with a description of them awake and fully healthy.
> 
> thank you for deciding to tag along!!! I am trying to be heavy-handed with my tagging so pleaaaaaase let me know if I missed anything that stuck out to you. the chapters will get more intense as the series goes on.
> 
> enjoy the ride!! (or enjoy ENOUGH......)

At the head of October, Miya Atsumu had ripped through his mother like a skyrocket; Miya Osamu wept like he'd suffered the ails of first love's loss.

But now it was early September, warm and sunny. Atsumu was in the fourth grade and he knew this for a fact; sitting next to his brother in front of the television, watching afternoon cartoons. Eating some snacks while they waited for their mother to get home from work. Simple, easy and separate, all until the commercial break ended.

The television screen flipped over towards some character he didn’t recognize, all blonde-haired, big-eyed. Atsumu’s chest filled with some strange sense of dread, a frightful premonition. Osamu just kept looking forward, eating his snack.

“Hey……hey, you.” Atsumu turned his eyes back to the screen to see the man closer than before. Could feel his eyes burning through the glass, through the thin skin of Atsumu’s chest as they slithered past his ribcage. Made his lungs drop. He stole a glance at Osamu in disbelief, yet his attention remained seemingly unreachable. He hesitantly turned back to the television, mouth beginning to run dry.

“M…me?” His pointer shakily jabbed at his chest as he peeked across the apple of his cheek at his brother, who sat apathetic and dazed, almost naïve. The TV character nodded, placing a hand on the glass, looking deeper into Atsumu’s being.

“Yeah, you. Have you ever noticed?” It quieted, as though sharing forbidden knowledge. “That you don’t exist?” The room dropped, sweat gathered at the nape of his neck, tension caught in baby hairs.

“Wait, w-what?” Atsumu stammered. The character stared into him; always deeper, always unblinking.

“Look at you: look at your socks, your shorts and shirt; your hair and face, even. Now look at _his._ ” The figure did not point, did not gesture, but Atsumu knew who he was talking about. Slowly, his eyes trailed over to Osamu. He felt the voice in the shell of his ear, hand rustling his hair, borderline paternal:

_“You are just a prototype for another.”_ The earth rushed back to the soles of his feet and he was standing up, heartbeat caught fast in the sides of his temples, pulse stalled at the base of his throat.

“…Tsumu?” Reality came back into focus and Atsumu had stood up, facing the television. Osamu was still seated and now halfway done his food, their favorite cartoon splayed pixelated across the fuzzy static of the screen. Atsumu’s food had slipped from his hand and spilled across the floor.

Everything felt wrong, different. _Irreversibly_ so, unforgiving yellow eyes bored into the flesh of his memory where there were none before.

“I-I… I have to go, like, right now.” He bent down hurriedly, frantically scooping up the few crackers he dropped, shoveling them back into the plastic bowl gripped shakily by a ridiculously sweaty palm.

The first night was okay. He laid in bed and felt no weight other than the light tug at his right wrist just as slumber swallowed him, the motion nearly familiar in multiple definitions of the word. The second night was fine, slightly more weight this time, tug becoming less of a guidance and more of a quiet assertion, a reminder of his place.

The 1,653rd night was hell on earth. Went from hands pushing down at his shoulders to the inexplicable weight on his chest, holding him in place. He couldn’t move, could hardly breathe let alone turn to face the wall his bed was cornered up against. Could only lay there and listen for the quiet rustle off to his left that always grew in volume, til the thing, the monster was standing next to him, _reminding him:_

_You will never exist as purely yourself, you will always be tied to me._

Atsumu woke up exhausted and drained from dealing with what seemed nearly unavoidable, mind plagued with the scent of breakfast. Descended their creaky steps, entered the kitchen to see him there. He wasn’t surprised by his attendance, but he was surprised by the surge of emotions that ran through his chest, up along the stretch of his neck and wrapped around his skull like spilled crude oil.

What he really wanted was to get out, to escape fast high above the commotion and never feel another pair of hands pushing him into the mattress again. Never see that figure; never watch it slowly invade the frame of his own brother’s body like some malevolent spirit, inhabit the corners of his bedroom at night like a reminder tucked away within the bedsheet confines of a poltergeist. By the 1,657th nightfall Atsumu sat hunched over his desk, bedroom door splintered shut behind him; sketching and praying and hoping, _begging_ for some spark of inspiration.

Yet inspiration was a being of its own will, and decided to visit Miya Atsumu in the form of a class presentation the next morning; a mirage lazily cast up by the crackled light of their middle school projector, image fracturing and digging into his mind like a splinter, a rogue shard of glass.

A flying machine. _A flying machine._ The thought burned a small hole through his skull like a firepoker; the scalding piece of coal, the begrudged escapee of life’s great bonfire. After the revelation, Atsumu flung himself into his work, pushing hard: every spare scrap of material was shoved hastily into his closet, into the small abandoned shed he passed on his way to the market. Nothing went unaccounted for, and with each step came the added bonus of a surefire result, the low but gradual shrinking of the dark figure hunched over in the corner of his bedroom.

Atsumu transformed his room into his laboratory, his sole refuge from the far more inconsequential tuggings of the outside world: for in that moment, nothing would ever weigh quite as heavily as the weight of understanding had on his chestbone in the dead of night, the thoughts that had plagued his mind on a constant loops laid adjacent beside the day’s timeless spin. Osamu inevitably metamorphosed into another weight, another being to avoid in pursuit of the ever-growing possibility of Atsumu’s individual freedom.

But despite this, he couldn’t stop; he couldn’t slow. His goal was to separate, to instill flawless independence, no scraps of codependency left behind. And one day he woke up and was larger, taller, and had just about finished building his machine.

He would leave by early morning on a weekend, far before anyone else in his home had risen. He ran his fingers through his bleach-dyed hair, packed up every essential he could find that was purely _Atsumu:_ he did not want a scrap of Osamu or anyone else to tag along and tarnish his only chance at individual life. And when the morning in question finally arrived there was no longer any trace of mysterious aura, just his mother and Osamu and _Atsumu,_ who was leaving. He had let the baby tooth dangle loose til it felt in the folds of his palm, no blood drawn. The door closed quietly behind him, and he took off like a rocket.

Ran down the street, sprinted across the old bridge, lungs blessed with the cool mist of morning while the soles of his shoes pounded carelessly into the concrete. It was summer again and all was waking: the birds began to stir and the sun was rising from its slumber, all long before the summer beetles would pick up their heated drone. Atsumu ran past the great fields near Kita’s and reached the machine in due time; lying in wait just on the forest’s edge, hidden by grove and shade.

With great effort he rolled it into position, pushed the rusty contraption across half the span of the great field to his right. He seated himself in its center, flung his few bags off to the side of the little space he left to move around— _this is just temporary, after all;_ he would tell himself. _Soon I will reach that place, that speck on the grand horizon where I can separate my being and exist as a sole particle, as Atsumu. Never Miya._

The engine roared behind him; shaking the body of the machine, shaking Atsumu himself to his very core: he could’ve sworn he’d felt Kita wake up from a half-mile away. Fire burned hot above the crown of his head and across the skin of his back and Atsumu temporarily cowered, shielded himself from the onslaught of heat; but before he could register his own fears, his own secondary guesses, the machine was beginning to jolt forward, to accelerate at an exponential level. It was _working;_ hodge-podge framework in all its glory, quivering at its roots like an arrow prepped to fire from some great bow.

Atsumu hit a pocket of air and his stomach lurched, but something shifted deep within him: he was above the ground now, and gaining height with incredible speed. Atsumu couldn’t help but watch in wonder as the small world beneath him—his town, his school his house and gymnasium—all disappeared beneath the fire-borne footing of his own handiwork, his _own_

 _This is mine. This is all, mine._ The thought burst through the front of his skull just as the wind-spread sail of his airship popped like a child’s balloon. Whatever thought Atsumu had next sank deep into his stomach like a stone, replaced only by one phrase:

 _I am going to fall, and I am going to die._ The great machine stalled for what felt like Atsumu’s last second of freedom, hung suspended in the air, the pendulum-like structure of a baby mobile; then it dropped, everything moving both inhumanely slow and far too fast for Atsumu’s liking. As his machine plummeted towards the treeline of the forest below, words floated to the surface of his consciousness and graced his ear like a comet, crammed into the shell of his ear:

“You are nothing without me, and I am everything without you.”

 _It wasn’t the monster’s voice._ The words burned like the first of the trees’ leaves brushing rough against his forearms; nearly familiar, in multiple definitions.

Atsumu woke up with his head at the foot of his bed; drenched in sweat, right forearm itchy. His left arm was dead asleep.


End file.
